The invention relates to a device and method for placing a pouring basin or funnel consisting of molding material, in particular molding sand, on a casting mold of molding material such as sand.
Basically, the present invention relates to the field of foundry practice. For casting molded bodies, foundry cores or molds are generally made in separate parts, combined and joined to one another to form a casting or sand mold. Thereafter, these sand molds are filled with a molten metal for making, for example, a metallic workpiece, in the series production the sand molds to be filled with molten metal advancing one after the other along the production line.
The time required for filling or pouring the liquid metal into a sand mold determines ultimately the cycle time, inasmuch as it is necessary to always make sure that each sand mold is filled with an adequate quantity of metal through a relatively small pouring hole. Only upon completion of the filling operation, can the filled sand mold be advanced to the next station for further processing.
However, the above-described method of filling a sand mold with molten metal is problematic insofar as the time-consuming filling of the sand hold is to be considered always as a critical cycle time and, thus, influences considerably the total production time. Since the actual cycle times at the other processing stations are substantially shorter, the actual cycle time and, thus, the total production time of a casting are considerably lengthened by the filling of the sand mold.
Devices for making sand molds of the type in question are already known from numerous publications. By way of example only, reference may be made to DE-OS 23 04 564.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to alleviate the above-described problematic situation with respect to the critical cycle time for filling the sand molds with molten metal. In this connection, it is intended to realize with simple means an adequate casting time at a reduced cycle time or a lengthened casting time at a constant cycle time. Furthermore, a corresponding method is described, which results in a decrease of the cycle time during the actual pouring of the material.